Discourse Markers

Until recently, the cross-linguistic phenomenon of discourse markers such as the English 'oh', 'like' and 'y(ou) know' have been considered part of poor linguistic performance. This book shows that they are a mono-functional class of verbal items, whose overall function is to serve as conversation monitoring devices. Every discourse is an interaction between the various participants' models of the world, which contain a model of the ongoing conversation, knowledge of the world and contextually relevant factors. The use of a discourse marker signals an upcoming or undergone structural or referential adaptation of one of the various models of the world involved in an ongoing conversation. The initial adapataion generates a continuum of adaptations in the the other models of the world involved. Thus, discourse markers convey instructions for processsing utterances in context while simultaneously montoring the conversation, thereby constituring an efficient, concise and economical means for facilitationg fluent communication. This analysis will fascinate and be useful to parents, language teachers and, in fact, to anybody who communicates, i.e. all of us.